After two hearings and a month of delay, the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors voted 6-1 Tuesday night to approve the rezoning for a roughly 350-home neighborhood on part of the historic Fotheringay farm in Elliston (via WSLS). The homes would be built in phases over five to eight years.
Supervisor Mary Biggs cast the lone no vote. "I could support this if it was not for the number of units," she said, according to WSLS. Vice Chair Steve Fijalkowski, whose district includes the site, voted yes. "What it comes down to as far as I'm concerned is the eastern Montgomery community needs more people," he said.
The applicant is Stateson Homes. County planning notices describe the request as a rezoning of 276.66 acres owned by Fotheringay LLC from agricultural (A-1) to planned unit development residential (PUD-RES) with proffered conditions. Cardinal News reported that a Sept. 4 revision dropped 13 acres the county had been offered an option to buy, cutting the development area to about 263 acres and the total to 349 units, down from as many as 400.
The unit mix has been reported two ways. Cardinal News put it at 225 single-family homes and 124 townhomes in October, while WSLS's account of Tuesday's vote listed 197 single-family homes and 152 townhomes. Both add up to 349, and it isn't clear from the coverage whether the mix changed.
Hello Contractor covered the board's October decision to hold off on a vote. That postponement came after a public hearing on Oct. 13 where 33 people spoke, most of them against the project, in a meeting that ran nearly to midnight. Then the county found a problem: one parcel had been left out of the legal advertisement for the board's hearing. "It was just that a parcel number basically got left out," county spokeswoman Jennifer Harris told Cardinal News. Rather than act on the flawed notice, the county scheduled a new public hearing for Nov. 10, which is when the board finally voted.
Elliston is a small community in eastern Montgomery County with just over 800 residents. WSLS reported that full build-out could add close to 1,000 people, more than doubling it.
Opponents raised price and environmental concerns this week. Resident Tim Thorton said the cheapest homes would cost more than the area's median sales price. David Perry, executive director of the Blue Ridge Land Conservancy, said he was worried about drinking water sources downstream, including the Roanoke River. Traffic, noise and the loss of rural character came up repeatedly in October as well.
Stateson has estimated average prices of about $285,000 for townhomes and $385,000 for single-family homes, according to Cardinal News, along with about $1 million a year in tax revenue for the county. The plan includes a recreation area, trails, sidewalks and public streets, plus a buffer between the new homes and the Fotheringay house.
That house is the property's anchor. It was the home of Revolutionary War Col. George Hancock and has been on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places since 1969, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which describes it as an elegant example of the Federal style.
The project has been in the works for a while. Stateson first filed in early 2025, when the county postponed hearings at the applicant's request so both sides could address concerns, and the board approved a comprehensive plan amendment that made this development possible. A solar farm proposed for the same land was dropped in 2023 after strong opposition.
Why it matters for Contractors
A 349-home build spread over five to eight years is a long, steady pipeline of work in eastern Montgomery County. Site work, utilities and streets come first, then a long run of framing, roofing, mechanicals, concrete and finish trades as each phase opens.
For small shops in the Christiansburg, Blacksburg and Roanoke area, the practical move is to get on Stateson's radar before the first phase goes to site plan, and to watch the county's planning pages for the subdivision and site plan filings that will show the phasing and the proffered conditions in detail. The rezoning is done, but the specifics of the first phase are still to come.